According to web metrics firm comScore, Microsoft's search engines saw their first market share increase in nearly a year (0.4% from February to March). One month of progress is nothing to write home about, as the software giant is still at a meagre 10.9% of the total search market.

More importantly, comScore senior vice president James Lamberti believes that increasing adoption of Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 are helping Microsoft's search efforts since the web metrics firm is seeing increased traffic to Live.com. "Growth from Live.com is outpacing Microsoft's overall search traffic growth. Live is the integration point for Vista, and it looks like Live.com is beginning to have an impact," said Lamberti. Assuming Microsoft's March increase is not a blip but the start of a trend, which is something we won't know for a few more months, it is very probable that as Vista adoption grows so does Live.com's (and therefore Microsoft's search traffic), meaning Microsoft's strategy of making Live.com the default search engine in IE7 is working.

Speaking of Microsoft's competition, comScore reported yet another month of gains for Google. Its market share saw a modest, 0.2% point increase during March, bringing it to 48.3%. comScore's news for Yahoo was not as good, as it was the only one of the top five search engines to see a decrease in market share last month: now at 27.5% from 28.1%, its lowest level in over a year.